


Secure Attachment

by inkstainedwretch



Category: Midsommar (2019)
Genre: F/M, also there are gay and trans harga do not @ me, creepy cult mentality about some stuff, pregnancy + childbearing also come up a bunch, reference to abortion, reference to really unhealthy family dynamics, reference to suicide and suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26669206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/inkstainedwretch
Summary: New life takes root, in Hälsingland, and so does a garden of new ideas in Dani’s mind.
Relationships: Dani Ardor/Pelle (Midsommar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 87





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**Author's Note:**

> I’m going on the theory that A) Dani’s home life wasn’t super great even before the events of the movie, and B) Terri was still pretty young, maybe 19 or 20, when it all went down. So, there's some brief flashbacks to some pretty upsetting stuff, in here. See tags for details.

Dani sleeps for 28 straight hours, after the fire temple has burned to nothing. She doesn’t dream at all, in fact she doesn’t really remember when she fell asleep, or even what happened after the frame collapsed. There’s a scene that’s been cut from her memory, a stripe of nothingness between the complete overload of watching it all burn down, and the ache in her head and her throat when she wakes up.

She can hardly move, when she finally opens her eyes again. The ceiling above her is plain wood, not the off-white drywall of her apartment with Christian, not even the painted murals of the youth house. She feels unexpectedly clean, all of the dirt and sweat and smoke gone from her skin and hair.

Her head rolls to the side, and she sees a hundred clusters of wildflowers stuffed between her mattress and the bed frame. They wall her in on all sides, their riotous hues blurring her vision so it takes her a moment to be able to see further. Then, when she finally gets her focus back, she sees a few other beds beyond hers, white sheets and flowers carved into the frames. They’re empty. On the floor, there’s a basin of water, dripping rags hanging halfway over one side.

She shuts her eyes again intending to blink, but they don’t open until the next morning.

\--

Pelle is beside himself with worry the whole day, to the point that he can hardly taste the food at the great tables, or hear the music the others dance to as they hold long, bright ribbons in their hands, weaving a great cord with their movement that is hung above the doorway of the great house. He keeps close to the infirmary, though he does not go in. He wants to be in there with Hanna and the young women, attending to their queen, but that is not his place.

Sometimes, if a new member of the family brings enough of their own pain along with them, something like this will happen. The price paid at the fire temple must be sufficient to strip the darkest, most wretched parasites from their souls, and if someone is too used to bearing that burden, it can leave them in shock. Usually, it isn’t quite so acute, and perhaps if Dani had not been so terribly, terribly hurt before her arrival, she would not need such a long time to recover. But oh, she has been hurt. 

Just after the midday meal, Hanna comes out of the infirmary for the first time since they carried Dani through its doors. She tosses a couple of bottles into the trash, stripping off a pair of gloves. She doesn’t look surprised at all to see Pelle standing there.

“She is asking for you,” she tells him.

“Is she awake?” he asks. “Or did you give her something?”

“Only for hydration,” she says with a smile. “You may go in.”

He bounds through the door and feels the weight of the world lift from his heart. Dani is sitting upright, drinking from a bowl of soup, and when she sees him, she goes still as a painting. After a moment, she sets the bowl down, and wordlessly, he walks to her side.

“Pelle,” she reaches over the drying flowers that surround her, her hand closing around his wrist. Once she has hold of him, she doesn’t seem to know what to do next.

“Dani,” he says with a smile. “It is so good to see you awake, again.”

Karin takes the tray of dishes from the side table and leaves them alone, and only when she’s gone does he have enough nerve to sit down beside her. He isn’t certain what he expected to see, when she woke up, but the blank sense of calm that hangs on her like chains makes him wonder if Hanna didn’t give her some medicine, after all.

“Did…was that real?” she asks softly.

“Yes,” he nods.

“They’re gone,” she blinks a few times.

“All of them,” he sets his hand on top of hers, the most he will allow himself before he’s certain she’s really here.

She looks down at their hands, and her brow furrows for a moment, and then something splinters in the unresponsive wall behind her expression. She huffs out a laugh, and it’s instantaneous, how her silence just breaks apart like frost in the spring.

“Do you know what my therapist told me, like two weeks ago?” the life is back in her voice, as though they were just sitting around the coffee table in his apartment.

“What’s that?” he can’t seem to stop smiling, despite himself.

“Couple of days before we left,” she shakes her head, “she was telling me I really needed to work through my fear of abandonment. That like…I needed to understand some people aren’t gonna be in my life forever.”

She laughs again, and there’s nothing manic or unstable about it, she just sounds like she remembered a wonderful joke.

“I think she was trying to make it easier, when he finally broke up with me,” she says.

He laughs with her now, because for the first time in days, he’s certain she’s going to be okay.

\--

They’re going to be in Hälsingland for another month, at least. When Dani hears this, the biggest surprise is that they’re going to leave, at all.

Hanna calls in a prescription to the nearest pharmacy, two hours’ drive away, and gets Dani a refill of her anxiety medicine. It isn’t lost on her that the woman who led her in the chorus of grief less than a week ago is one of the commune’s only doctors. She wonders if there’s a separate course of study the Hårga give to their healers, emotional medicine to supplement the physical.

When she can’t sleep, and she can never sleep, she takes two of the little white tablets and crunches them between her teeth. When she thinks too hard about the procession of bodies in wheelbarrows marching into the temple, Christian sewn up into the skin of that poor little bear, she takes another. For a good few days, she skates on the surface of a lake, frozen too thinly by benzodiazepines, but she doesn’t sink down into it.

She doesn’t know what to do with herself, but there doesn’t seem to be much else to do. The more complicated rituals are over, and everything else seems bizarrely pedestrian, feasts and dances and solemn, prayerful worship of clay idols that are then pushed into the river to dissolve. For the time being, she is relieved of the burden of thinking.

Then, she pops open the plastic bottle and finds it empty. It’s been five days.

She runs headlong into the infirmary, and she hangs her head in shame as she puts the empty bottle on Hanna’s desk, and she cries, and she cries, and she cries. Not the desperate wailing of before, but the silent, shrinking dread that only finds her when she’s really fucked up.

This is beneath her. This is the kind of thing Terri used to do, but she doesn’t have the luxury of being too sick to function. Dani was the responsible daughter, the one who got her bachelors summa cum laude and threw away the packets of box cutter blades when she found them hidden in the bathroom cabinet.

She babbles all of this in a great rush, explaining to Hanna how this has all been her fault, she should have kept going home for dinner on Wednesdays to make sure everything was okay. She shouldn’t have had that huge fight with her mom the week before it happened, because she’d changed majors without telling her first. She should have told Christian to go fuck himself and gone home after Terri hadn’t answered her first call. She should’ve called 911 before her neighbors had to do it for her.

Hanna doesn’t say anything until she’s done. She just unlocks the medicine cabinet on the wall and checks the labels of the bottles inside. Eventually, she takes a brown glass bottle and brings it to Dani, putting it into her palm.

“This is a tincture,” she says. “It will help to calm you.”

“Oh my god no,” Dani shakes her head. “No, I can’t see them again, I can’t…”

“No, you will not trip out,” Hanna closes her fingers around the bottle. “It is called damiana. The taste is bitter, but it will calm you.”

Dani knows damiana, from the box of tea Amy picked up for her at the health food store, maybe a year ago. She opens the bottle and sniffs it, and it smells like bitter tea that had only helped a little.

“It is very strong,” Hanna says. “You only need a drop or two.”

With a shrug, because what else can she do, she takes the dropper out and shakes it over her tongue. It’s bitter as hell, and it makes her wince, but she does feel a little less frayed at the edges.

“Better?” Hanna asks.

“Mhm,” she nods. “Sorry, that…I don’t know where that came from.”

Hanna sets a hand on her face, her thumb sliding over Dani’s cheekbone.

“We help each other, here,” she says. “It does not all have to be up to you.”

That shakes something loose in her, and she leans forward on her elbows with a sigh. Hanna puts a hand on her back and rubs slow, gentle circles over her dress.

“Come back later,” she says, “I will give you something for sleep.”

Dani just nods, wondering if this is what it feels like to be the younger sister.

\--

Pelle watches from the youth house as Dani pores over a book of runes. She’s seated under a tree, pencil in hand, learning one of her new languages as the children play beside her. They’re tossing little bags of grain to each other, running in zig zags to try and catch them, taking care not to throw them in her direction.

The light dappled over her face makes her look ethereal. Her hair is braided up, shining where the sun reaches it, and her lips are pursed just a little in concentration. The linen of her dress flows over her legs, and Pelle cannot recall when he last saw her so at ease. Never in America, not even before the disaster.

His heart glows warm in his chest, and suddenly he is sure he will lose his mind if he is not closer to her.

The earth is warm beneath his feet as he makes his way to her, but under the tree it is cool and quiet. Dani is already smiling, when he arrives, she has never smiled so often before now. When he sits down beside her, he can feel the soft contentment that hangs around her like mist. He plucks a flower from the ground, a little orange thing, and slips it behind her ear. 

“Hey,” she says. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to see you,” he shrugs, and he cannot keep himself from smiling.

Her cheeks darken a little. She looks away, but she’s still grinning, and what kind of lucky wretch is he, that he gets to see her smile like this every single day? He dares to lean in close and kiss her temple, and without a second of hesitation, she turns to embrace him. He feels her happiness flow from her body into his, and silently he says a prayer of thanks to the Great Mother, to the God of Balance, to everyone else he can think of who may have had a hand in this tremendous blessing.

Not even a week before, he held her like this on the forest floor, after she took off in a panic just before bed. She had seen the workers tilling the soil where the fire temple’s ashes had finally cooled, and she howled in grief and guilt, her knees scraped from her fall to the ground. It was only the two of them, and he cried with her, let her pain become his own, as she purged the last of the anguish from her body.

Now, she tucks her face into his neck, and he can feel her breath on his skin, the soft push of her lips below his ear. It is nothing at all like before, when she had choked on her own self-loathing. _I killed him_ , she sobbed, _I killed him_ , and fire had not been enough to cleanse her of the poison Christian had fed her year after year. _Yes, we killed him_ , he whispered through shaking teeth, _we killed them all, and my brothers, and my parents before them._

He sighs softly, the image of her blotchy, tear-streaked cheeks flashing through his mind, the way her voice had been little more than breath as she confessed the root of her disgust.

_I’m not sorry._

His heart was fit to burst with love, as it is now, feeling her here in his arms. He draws her up so he can kiss her like he did then, tears and all, and her face feels warm cradled in his hands. A wonderful hunger grows up through his stomach like ivy, and though it is not the time for it, he wants to take her to the lovers’ house, wants to lay her down among the soft blankets and worship his queen.

There’s a hard thud from behind him, and they jump at the sound of a child crying out. She whips her head around to look, and he sees the youngest, little Linnea, curled up in the grass. He can see the stone she tripped on, poor girl, and her face is smeared with dirt and twisting into a grimace. The other children rush to her, but to his delight, Dani gets there first.

She sits down in the grass and scoops the girl up into her arms, brushing the dirt from her face and running a soothing hand through her hair. Linnea has just turned four, and she is a quiet girl, so she lays her head on Dani’s chest and sniffles softly as Dani rocks her back and forth. When the rest of the children get there, they kneel in the grass around her, placing their hands gently on Linnea’s back. The eldest, Ove, takes deep, steady breaths, leading the others until they all breathe in unison. In moments, Linnea has calmed down.

Pelle could shout with pride. He wants to jump up and dance, as he watches Dani press her lips to Linnea’s forehead. What a gift this cycle has given them all. What an absolute treasure. But, he doesn’t want to frighten them. He can’t stand the idea of disrupting any of it, as Linnea climbs out of Dani’s lap, and one by one, the other children come forth so they may also receive a kiss from the May Queen. So instead, he leans back against the tree and savors the taste of victory on his tongue.

_You don’t need to be sorry. You don’t need to feel anything for him, at all. He’s not coming back._

\--

There’s a great shriek from outside the youth house, and that’s what wakes Dani up. Her first instinct is to panic, to wonder who was sacrificed while she slept, but that’s over now. That won’t happen for another ten years, Siv told her.

The sound of footsteps pounding across the floor reaches her next, and then the door thrown open hard enough that it hits the outside wall. Dani sits up jerkily, half-awake, and watches one person after another jump out of bed and tear outside. The screaming only gets louder, voice after voice joining in, and Dani looks over at Pelle’s bed to find it empty.

She hauls herself up, and the first thing that comes to mind is the lingering nightmare of the outside world catching up with them, the image of some kind of authority coming to investigate the disappearance of one of her late classmates. They wouldn’t be looking for her, of course. She had no family left out there to wonder where she’d gone.

Instead, she sees a great crowd of people all dancing around one another, shouting with joy, trilling with their tongues as though they’re playing Skin the Fool. The sun is blazing, but Dani knows it can’t be much later than six – the bell hadn’t rung to wake them all at seven, yet.

She looks for someone who knows enough English to explain, because she knows how to say _what’s going on?_ in Swedish, but not enough to understand the answer she’ll get. Before she’s even completely past the threshold of the youth house, everyone goes quiet, turning and backing away in a great circle. Dani can see two people standing at the center of it, as she makes her way down the hill, and when she reaches the others, she recognizes Maja, clinging to her mother’s nightgown and shaking with tears.

Her mother – what’s her name? Dani can hardly remember – begins to sing, her voice clear and strong, only shaking a little as Dani realizes she’s tearing up, as well. (Nearly everyone is, even Dani’s eyes are stinging now.) But, she’s smiling, and as the rest of the women join in the song, Maja starts to smile, as well.

Dani doesn’t know the words. She doesn’t even know which language it’s in, since the Hårga’s affekt language can sound a lot like Swedish sometimes. But, when everyone raises their hands to wave them in silent applause, she does the same, because she can feel the happiness and love that radiates from everyone around her. She’s still surprised at how easily that came to her, in the beginning of her life in Hälsingland, this flow of feeling from one person to another.

When the song is done, Maja takes a step back, and her mother leans down to kiss her forehead. She says something Dani can’t hear, and then she stands and huffs her breath out and in again, that _hoh-aah_ sound Dani has learned represents the breath of life, passed from one person to another. Maja nods, whispering a tearful _tack_ before rushing to where Siv is standing. That means “thank you”, Dani knows that much.

“Maja…” Siv beams at her, pulling her into a warm embrace, saying something Dani does not understand.

Another sharp breath, when Siv draws back, and Maja is bouncing with joy.

“ _Tack_ ,” she whimpers, and then she turns to look at Dani.

The feeling of having no idea what to do is now very familiar to Dani, but it doesn’t make her freeze the way it used to. She’s been May Queen long enough to expect people to approach her, in moments of reverence like this. Someone will tell her what she needs to do. Someone always does.

Sure enough, as Maja walks over to her, she hears Pelle’s voice behind her.

“She wants you to bless her,” he whispers, “and the baby.”

Oh.

Maja bites her lip, when she gets to Dani, looking not just nervous, but outright scared. Dani looks back at Pelle, her brows furrowed.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“The May Queen’s blessing is very important, for the first child,” Pelle says. “All children, really, but it’s especially important to her, since…she conceived during _midsommar_.”

It hits Dani like a blow whose child Maja carries, how the moon had waned and waxed again since she’d seen him naked on the floor of the great house. And then she remembers that this girl is sixteen, a full year younger than Terri was when she came into Dani’s room in hysterics, a pregnancy test clutched in one hand. She blinks, and for a moment she’s in the car on the way to Planned Parenthood with Terri sitting next to her, crying until she was sick and shouting _you can’t tell anyone, Dani! Anyone! Swear to me!_

Dani feels her jaw tremble, and she wipes her eyes as her vision blurs. Sometimes, she feels so far away from the woman who lived that life, but sometimes it feels like yesterday, and right now she wonders if she’ll turn around and see her parents in the crowd. But, Maja is her sister now, and she isn’t going to let her sister down.

“What do I say?” she asks.

“Just give her your blessing,” Pelle smiles gently. “You can say it in English, it’s fine.”

Dani turns back to Maja, who takes a step back, putting a hand over her mouth. No, that won’t do. 

“Hey,” she reaches for her, “hey, it’s okay. Come here.”

Maja looks at Pelle, who nods, and then she steps into Dani’s arms. Her hair is warm from the sun, and she’s shaking, and her body feels so small, and it’s amazing to Dani that this little girl is going to be a mother, soon.

“You have my blessing,” she murmurs, rubbing her hands over Maja’s back. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Maja takes one of them and puts it on her stomach, and Dani nods.

“Yeah,” she laughs softly, “the baby too.”

She rasps her next breath through her throat, giving life to them both, and Maja starts crying again. She throws her arms around Dani’s neck, pressing a flurry of kisses to her face. The women begin to sing again, and Dani holds on tightly to her sister, and from behind them Pelle hugs them both, pressing his lips to Dani’s hair, then Maja’s.

\--

They have a celebration that evening, and all the women dance circles around Maja, tossing flowers and handfuls of grain at her feet. She stands at the center with her hands lifted to the sky, dressed in the red robe of the Great Mother, her skin painted with bind runes and holy symbols. She seems unable to stop smiling, and her eyes gleam with the divine ecstasy of those beloved by the gods.

Pelle stands at the perimeter of the clearing with the rest of the men, all of them forming a wider circle around the women to shield them from any envious spirits. His brother Eimar stands to his left, and as they watch the women dance, he gives Pelle a nudge with his elbow.

“Quite the year it’s going to be, eh?” he asks, grinning like a fool.

“It does seem that way,” Pelle nods towards the dancing women. “We haven’t had a summer this fortunate in some time.”

“Not since Astrid was May Queen,” Eimar chuckles. “Do you think we will be blessed with two children this year?”

Ah, so that’s what he was so excited about. His sister Astrid became May Queen at seventeen and conceived a child that very summer, so there were two new mothers to celebrate, both dressed in red as the others danced around them. Then Astrid left on pilgrimage and returned as his brother Eimar, and Pelle was just old enough then to stand in the circle of men that surrounded him, as Father Odd had taken a bowl of ink and marked the scars on Eimar’s chest with runes of blessing.

Eimar had even brought his sister Ulrika home with him, averting her eyes from them all as she arrived, hair still shorn, dressed in ill-fitting khaki shorts. _Welcome home, dear girl_ , Siv said to her, and upon seeing her finch, hearing the stammering, frantic denials that followed, she set a hand on her shoulder. _You have nothing to fear from us. There is no need for you to pretend, here._

Pelle can see her now, dancing in the dress they gave her that very day. She glows with joy now, such a different woman than she was then, when she wept and clung to her new family for dear life. Her sisters had fallen to the ground with her, sharing her pain, sharing her relief. They welcomed her with open arms, because Hårga understood, Hårga had always, _always_ understood that the arrangement of the soul was so much more important than the arrangement of the body.

He wishes sometimes that the family could be bigger, that they could offer home and comfort to everyone out there who needs it so desperately, but he understands why it cannot. They can only bring so many new lives into the family each year, for their safety, and to ensure there is enough for everyone in the year’s harvest.

He watches as Dani, crowned with bright yellow blossoms, jumps up in unison with the women in the inner circle. He lets his imagination drift, painting her skin with holy symbols, the flowers and fabric of her dress blood-colored and rich with life. There’s room for another child, this year, but only one.

“I could not say,” he shakes his head. “She is still so raw, you know?”

“Oh, I know,” Eimar sets a hand on his shoulder. “But, you are highly favored by the great cycle, Pelle. You and the queen will be blessed with a child. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Perhaps not this year,” he says with caution, “perhaps not while she is queen.”

“Pelle,” Eimar chuckles, “she was your queen before she wore that crown, and she always will be, no matter who dances longest next summer.”

Pelle feels himself flush, but he does not deny it.

His eyes follow Dani as the dance comes to an end, the drumming footsteps quieting down. With Hanna behind her giving her the words to say, she kneels down before Maja and lifts both hands toward her. Maja takes them, standing taller than she had that morning, and as the May Queen leads them all in worship, her eyes flick over to Pelle. They share the unmatched pride of a bountiful harvest, grown from seeds planted long ago.

\--

Dani isn’t as light of a sleeper as she used to be, but now and then sharing a room with upwards of twenty people gets to her. She hears someone trip and fall to the floor, and she jolts awake to see Valentin and…Sven? No, that’s somebody else, probably? It’s too dark to really tell. They were halfway out the door when Valentin apparently tripped on his own feet. It’s gotta be close to midnight, it’s so dark out, and the two men can’t seem to stop laughing.

Someone sighs in frustration and shouts at them to get out, and it strikes Dani that this is maybe the fourth couple she’s seen sneak out of the youth house, this month.

With a roll of her eyes, she turns over to see Pelle shaking his head, also having been woken by the noise. He looks at her and just gives a shrug, and that actually makes her laugh.

He flops back down onto his pillow, and as the door swings shut again, Dani watches the way his body relaxes as he settles back into sleep. It’s instantaneous, how he melts back down onto his bed, face half-buried in his pillow, covers mostly kicked off so she can see a sliver of skin where his shirt has started to ride up. He looks so calm, nothing at all like the tense ball of muscle she becomes in her sleep.

He’s beautiful. She knows this, she’s known this for ages, but there’s something even more beautiful in how he can let himself rest, like nothing in the world could ever hurt him.

Their beds are a good five or six feet apart, but she swears she could just roll over and tuck herself in close beside him. Wouldn’t that be nice? But despite it all, she’s too tired to move. There’s nothing to do but watch him, take in the softness and peace of his body. She feels her breathing slow down to match his, the steady rise and fall of his back guiding her down into sleep.

\--

“Who was that?” she asks him the next morning. “Besides Valentin, I know him. I didn’t recognize the other guy.”

“Claes,” Pelle says flatly. “He got back from pilgrimage late.”

He looks at the group of men hauling wheelbarrows full of dirt and stone to fortify the well near the cow pasture, and he’s certain she can see the disdain in his eyes.

“Late?”

Pelle sighs, shaking his head. He knew this would be something he’d have to explain eventually, but he takes no pride in it. Every few years, someone on pilgrimage ends up like Claes.

“We are taught to exercise restraint, when we are on pilgrimage, or at the very least to exercise caution. Claes has always been impetuous, and so he contracted a sickness that required treatment before he could return.”

His eyes harden.

“He is fortunate his affliction was curable,” he mutters.

Dani narrows her eyes, looking at the working men, and then back to him. He can see the pieces connecting in her mind.

“What do you mean, restraint?” she asks.

“I mean we don’t encourage promiscuity,” he sighs again. “It’s a matter of safety, not some stupid moral issue. We cannot let a sickness like that spread, here. It would be the end of us.”

“Oh,” Dani blinks, and he can see the way her shoulders sink with the weight of understanding. “So, what happens if you catch something…permanent?”

Pelle’s face falls, and he looks at her with sad, soft eyes.

“You lose your family,” he says gently. “They can never return. We must refuse to acknowledge them, if they ever try to contact us again. Their information is purged from our records. They’re forsaken utterly. It’s insane, to think someone would risk that for the sake of…”

He flaps his hand in the air a few times, making a sort of sputtering noise. Dani looks worried, and he feels it, the sting of compassion in her wounded heart. He has to explain himself quickly, before she jumps to conclusions.

“It’s different if something terrible happens, of course,” he says. “I mean, if they were attacked, we do not abandon them. It’s only happened perhaps twice, but we did not shun them.”

Dani swallows thickly, but he can tell from the slow nod she gives him that she understands. He isn’t worried about her; family members who come from outside are best introduced slowly to the Hårga way of life, and Dani has found her place with remarkable ease. Perhaps it’s her familiarity with the worst of the world’s affekts that lets her see the great cycle with such clarity.

He knows she has nothing to fear, no stake in this conversation, because a whole year ago, he’d taken a golden opportunity to set his jacket on top of her phone, while she was over at his place. To his good fortune, she’d left without even asking about it, distracted by some tedious argument with Christian. He returned it the next morning, of course, but by then he had copied most of its contents to his computer, which included the login to, among other things, the patient portal for her gynecologist.

He hadn’t really been worried, of course – Christian’s incessant whining was evidence enough that she wasn’t in any danger. But, he had to be certain, to show his work to the elders before he could bring her here to stay. Family history, medical clearance, even an astrological chart had been in his report, and the day Siv gave her blessing was the happiest of his life. He’s had happier days since, of course. He has happier days to come, he’s sure.

He elects not to tell her about the way those two unlucky souls had been brought home, the cups full of hemlock and foxglove they’d drunk, surrounded by their weeping family. He says nothing about what a gift it was, that they had been permitted this quiet slip back into the cycle, that the way they had been marred by the world outside did not follow them. Their bodies did not rest in the ancestral tree, bound to their souls by fire. They had been given the chance to start again.

In all likelihood, Dani will never have to learn these things, and if she does, it will be much later. They have time.

\--

“So, does every conception have to be approved first?”

Pelle looks thoughtful, inhaling deeply as he draws his spoon back and forth through his soup.

“Kind of,” he shrugs. “It’s not good for too many children to be born at once, so it mostly comes down to timing. And if we’re not looking to conceive another prophet, there’s the consideration of genetics. Did you speak with Hanna, by the way?”

“Yeah,” Dani nods. “Yeah, they had my brand in stock. Didn’t miss a day.”

Everyone who could potentially bear a child in Hälsingland is on some kind of birth control. Everyone. Hanna’s office has a shelf full of calendars to keep track of their cycles. When the last row of Dani’s pill case ran out, she was ready with a new one, already filled. Dani never told anyone she was on it to begin with, but someone had to have seen her flip open the case each morning. Everyone’s lives all blend together here, and she’s starting to get used to it.

“So, what happens if…” Dani’s mouth quirks to the side as she wonders how to say it, “I mean, what if the elders say you can have a kid, but not with the person you want to?”

“That does happen,” Pelle nods. “You don’t have to have sex with them, in that case. We just sort of…”

He makes a tipping motion with his hand, and then he chuckles.

“We call it being conceived by hand,” he says. “One person provides the seed, and then someone else plants it. Sometimes Hanna does it, sometimes the person’s lover does it. It can be very intimate.”

Dani furrows her brow, imagining what that might look like. Of all things, she’d never thought of that.

“Huh,” she looks at him curiously. “How often does that happen?”

“Pretty often,” he grins at her. “It’s how I was conceived. My mother only loved women, and so she had her wife plant the seed in her.”

“Oh wow,” she can’t help but smile. “That’s…actually kind of beautiful.”

“It is,” Pelle picks up his bowl and drinks the rest of the soup. “All parts of the great cycle are beautiful, when they’re given the proper respect.”

“Yeah…” Dani thinks of Ylva landing face-first on the stone, and how intently she had flung herself from the cliff. There was a sort of grace to it, in the cloud of hindsight. Dani wonders for the hundredth time if she even felt it, after the initial hit.

“You don’t need to worry right now, though,” Pelle’s voice draws her back to the present. “It’s certainly good fortune, for the May Queen to conceive, but we are already blessed beyond measure that Maja is pregnant.”

Dani looks down at her reflection in the empty ceramic of her bowl, and she thinks of all the conversations she’d had with Christian, about maybe settling down and starting a family after graduation. He’d always blown her off, and there was this terror in the back of her mind that he’d get sick of her and leave, giving her sole custody of some theoretical child. Not every woman was as lucky as her mom, who remarried when Dani was so young, she never called him anything but “dad”.

She looks over to where Maja sits with Linnea in her lap, playing a hand game and chanting a little nursery rhyme along with her. She looks so happy, so relaxed, and Dani can’t help but think of Terri again, how driving her to the clinic had been Dani’s way of keeping her from downing a whole bottle of Tylenol. Maja will never have to worry about what will happen to her or her child, and neither will Dani, if she ever has one.

“What if I wanted to, though?”

As soon as the words are out, she jumps. The idea terrifies her, but what scares her more is that she said it out loud. But, before she can take it back, Pelle’s hand closes around her own.

“I would be honored and overjoyed,” he says, “and we would all be here for you. But, only if you’re certain.”

Her heart is racing, and she exhales slowly, leaning forward on the table.

“I don’t,” she shakes her head, “I was just curious, I…”

“It’s okay,” he gives her hand a squeeze. “I know.”

It strikes her all at once that she hasn’t even slept with him, yet. She wouldn’t know how to make that happen, if she wanted to. But she does want to, and maybe she’s comfortable enough to bring it up, now? It feels like jumping too far ahead, to think about children, but knowing the possibility is there, knowing there’s a great big family here waiting to catch her, to hold her… Hanna did say she and Pelle had the approval of the elders, not that Dani had even thought to ask.

First things first, she decides, and she leans over and kisses him with all the sweetness she can muster. His arms wrap around her, and she can feel his smile against her lips.

“Where do you go,” she asks softly. “when you want to be alone?” 

He looks at her with reverence, his forehead resting against hers.

“Why don’t I show you tonight?” he asks.

She nods, and then she kisses him again, because she can.

\--

The lovers’ house is small, its beds twice the size and a fifth the number of the youth house. Trunks of sheets are placed along the walls. Blankets are folded neatly beside them. It reminds Dani of the stories Amy told her about the swing clubs and kink parties she went to. No one is there when they arrive, but it does not feel entirely empty.

The lamps are not lit, when they enter. The light from outside lets them see a swath of the wall, perhaps a tenth of its decoration thrown into view. Lovers of all kinds are entwined from floor to ceiling, lurid and blissful. Pelle takes a long match from a box fastened to the wall and strikes it on the side. Its little flame is all they have, when the door shuts behind them.

Then one by one, he lights three of the great torches mounted to the wall. They don’t need any more than these, their corner of the room glowing bright. He has readied their bed with golden sheets and pillows, and from door to bedside the floor is strewn with flowers. He walked backwards when the sun was high that day and plucked them from the earth, and perhaps he had also taken a pinch of ashen soil between his fingers, tossing it among the petals and stems. Perhaps.

The grit under his feet feels like triumph, as they walk together. She holds his hand in a grip like iron, but oh, how she smiles.

When they reach the bed, he sits her down on its edge, taking little blossoms from the floor and slipping them into the edges of her braided hair. She looks at him curiously, reaching for his shirt, wanting to pull him closer, but he catches her hands. He looks at her pleadingly, his face bathed in firelight, with so much honest need it strikes her heart like lightning.

“Please,” he whispers, already kneeling, already sliding her skirt up her legs, “may I?”

Her mouth goes dry, realizing what he means, and she scatters half the flowers as she shakes her head. “I don’t…that doesn’t work on me.”

“Do you not like it?” He stops dead, one knee on the ground, waiting on her word.

She has to think for a second. She doesn’t actually know. But, god help her, the way he’s looking at her now, she wants to find out. She doesn’t deserve the way he treats her, but the more he keeps it up, the more she starts to believe he means it.

“No,” she whispers, and now her own hands are gathering the hem of her nightgown. “No, go ahead.”

He kneels, his hands cradling her hips to move her forward, and when he realizes she hadn’t bothered with underwear, his whole body turns hot. A kiss to one knee, then the other, and inch by inch he moves forward, flicking his tongue across the skin of her thighs, taking one of her hands and bringing it to his hair as he makes his slow ascent. She shivers. She doesn’t want to grip his hair too tightly, but then his fingertips brush across the curls already glistening wet, and she has to hold on just to stay steady.

Her legs part on instinct to welcome him, and in an instant he’s drunk with the scent of her, he has to taste it, his tongue delving in to part her lips. She gasps, throwing an arm out behind her to keep herself upright, looking down in disbelief. He does it again, finding the little bud nestled above her folds and learning its shape. She feels full with heat and hunger, and she cannot keep her eyes open, and she cannot look away from him.

He’s aching, his thigh slick under the fabric of his pajamas, and he savors it. He seals his mouth around her, watching her as her breath begins to stutter, and he stays in place. He laps at her, quickens, and she rewards him with a whimper and the press of her hips against his face. Her eyes flutter closed. He keeps at it. When her back hits the mattress, he slides an arm under her leg, pulling her closer. She lifts up, looking for more, and with his thumb he presses down, tasting the salt of his own skin alongside her.

It’s the sweetest pain he’s ever felt, when both her hands fist tightly in his hair. _Pelle_ , she’s hardly even breathing when she says it, her body begins to melt from within, and with her eyes squeezed shut she can still see the flicker and glow of the firelight. She’s quiet, Christian always said she was too quiet, and she twists up in ecstasy with nothing but the shudder of her breath to show for it. But Pelle, oh, he is so loud. Such a helpless sound he makes, feeling her pulsing, quaking underneath him.

Her throat is dry, when she falls back panting, her jaw is shaking, and she might cry, she isn’t sure yet. She’s so hungry for him now, and when she sits up he’s there to meet her with a bottle of cool water. She swallows it greedily, and then she hauls him up by the shirt, pulling it from him and ripping his waistband down before she really knows it. He makes a noise of surprise, which startles her back to the present, where she’s got him halfway pinned to the bed. She remembers herself.

“Sorry,” she draws back, and he follows her.

“For what?” he asks, lust running through his blood so his whole being burns with it. “I’m yours. Use me, Dani, I am yours.”

It flips some kind of switch in her, and she shoves him back down. For a second she just looks at him, her braid half-undone, her eyes dark, her nails digging into the skin of his shoulders, and then she kisses him like he’s never been kissed before. Her whole body rolls against him, holding him there, and she learns what she tastes like, to him. It’s his turn to whimper, as she clutches his face in both hands, his hips canting up seeking anything, anything she will give him.

She pulls the ties from her hair and shakes it loose, flowers falling onto him as she leans back. She takes him in her hand, slides down onto him so quickly it makes him shout, and then she has to pause for a second to get used to the feeling. She bites her lip, blinks a few times, and when she looks back down at him, his breath is hissed through his teeth. He whimpers again, letting his head fall back, feeling her heat, her life.

“Fuck,” she sighs, and then she sways, rolls her hips forward, humming softly as he gasps for breath.

His hands come up to her hips, and he wills his eyes open, drinking in the sight of her all aglow in the torch light. She grinds down on him, her head falling forward so her hair spills over one shoulder, and her desire is so honest, so unhurried that he knows on instinct that Christian never witnessed this. Not once. The press and slide of him inside her feels right, makes her feel hot and human. She licks the tips of her fingers and brings them down to stroke herself, and gods above, it’s the most beautiful sight.

Her eyes shut at some point, so she hears him first, the choked _aah_ that tears from his throat while his fingers dig into her skin. She snaps them open, and he lets her see what she’s done to him, how to his shame, he can’t hold himself back, she’s too much for him, it’s all too much.

“Dani,” he moans, “please, please…”

She feels the need in his voice, and it shakes her to her core.

“Are you close?” she barely says it, but he hears her. All he can do is nod and hold on tight.

Her mouth falls open a little, and her hand speeds up. God, he looks so wrecked, the way his head snaps sideways, his hair clinging to his forehead with sweat. His hips snap up underneath her, and he burns for her, his voice rough and snarling. It turns her on so much she can fucking taste it, feeling how wet it is between them now, and she bites her lip again.

“Oh my god,” she pants, she’s losing it, “oh my god, oh my god–”

His eyes fly open when he feels her grind down again, squeezing him, taking her pleasure of him a second time. “Oh, yes, yes...” he smiles like a fool, reaching up to catch her when she falls down onto him. He loves her more than life, loves this wild and victorious woman she has become.

She catches her breath, reaches down for the water, and they share it. Then, they lie exhausted together, silence washing over them, and they share that, too.

“Is it okay if we sleep here?” she asks.

“Mhm,” he nods, and then it is quiet again.

“How much longer do we have?” she asks, eventually.

“Another week or so,” he says.

“And then, what?” she laughs just a little. “We just go back?”

“We go back,” he says with a smile, “we finish our degrees, we bring our knowledge and our experience back home to our family.”

“Will we come back to visit?”

She sounds so hopeful, it makes his heart sing.

“Every summer,” he tells her. “Every winter too, if you like.”

She smiles wide enough that it almost hurts, rolling towards him, and she laughs again. She feels weightless, like she did when the temple collapsed, like every awful thing she had to endure up to now has just dissolved through her skin. She can’t remember ever feeling so safe, not worrying what’s going to happen next time she checks her phone, or if he’s going to be there the next morning, because of course he is. She has nothing to worry about, no one to chase after for fear of being left behind.

Nine human lives, maybe even twelve, was the price they had to pay for this feeling of complete relief. She’d do it again. She’d do it every ten years until she went diving over the edge of a cliff, if it meant she could feel this way all the time.

“I love you so much,” she says, for the first time, but not the last.

His arms wrap around her, and he holds her close, and he cannot remember ever being happier. Even taking into account every step he has taken to guide her here, to her new home, in this moment he is the luckiest man that ever lived.

\--

They lie together on her bed the next night, close as they can be, her head resting on his chest. The weight of her body on his feels like home.

“Tell me what we’re going to say,” she asks, not for the first time, “when we get back to the states.”

“They went rock climbing,” he tells her, “high up in the mountains by the river.”

“They went out too far,” she continues after him.

“They were gone for too long,” he nods. “Since the sun never sets, they probably didn’t realize how much time had passed.”

“You tried to warn them,” she sighs, “about how unstable the trail gets the further you go. The rockslides.”

“All we could find was Ingemar’s backpack, when it washed up on the river bank,” he feels a faint sting in his chest. “…I’m glad you got to meet him, even if it was only for a short while.”

He feels her stiffen a little, and her next question is one he has been waiting for.

“Why weren’t you in there with him?”

Pelle feels his heart grow heavy.

“He offered himself willingly,” he says softly. “Everyone who carries out a sacrifice firsthand is suffused with the base affekts that cause violence. It’s why the men wear masks, when they light the temple, to protect themselves.”

“You mean he killed them,” she sounds perfectly calm now. “Physically, I mean. Both of them?”

“Yes,” he inhales deeply. “He took on the burden of the kill, so his death would free us from resentment and bitterness.”

She nods, her hand sliding down to take hold of his.

“I think it worked,” she all but whispers. “I don’t see them, anymore. Not even when we have mushroom tea.”

He looks at her, a slice of light from under the curtain painting a stripe of color on her body. Cotton gown and sun-browned skin, button nose, wisps of hair curling above her eyes. His admiration could outshine the sun itself. She had told him, only once, about how she had seen her parents after she’d been crowned, how her haunted sister had danced with her around the may pole. There is no word to describe this woman but _incredible_. The outside world never deserved her, not for an instant.

“No wonder you slept for so long,” he lifts her hand, kisses her fingers gently. “It must have taken such strength of spirit to bring them all here with you, without even knowing why.”

There’s a moment where she won’t look at him. It will take time to unwind the doubt that binds her like this, but Pelle is a patient man. And yet, it does not take as long this time for her gaze to lift until she can see him. Already, she is teaching herself how to be free.

“I’m glad you got to meet them, too,” she says, “even if it was just once.”

He’ll never forget the day, two years ago, at the housewarming they had when she and Christian had moved in together. Her parents had walls of politeness built around themselves, managing to carry on a conversation without really saying anything. They asked every guest in attendance when Christian was planning on proposing, despite getting the same answer every time. Terri herself kept close to him, asking questions that would have been uncomfortable even if he hadn’t known her age. They’d stayed for half an hour.

The last thing Dani’s mother had said to her was cold as ice, _I’m glad you’re doing what you think is best for you._ He watched through the cracked bedroom door as Dani blinked back tears, once they were gone. He made a promise to himself that very night that he would bring her here, when the time came, and she would have the family she deserved.

“So am I,” he says, and it’s not a lie.

\--

They go back in the winter, and Dani waits for Hanna to get out her ultrasound machine and make sure, before she tells the rest of them. There’s a bonfire, singing and shouting, aqua vitae and sweet mead flowing like a river through their glasses. Her crown is made of evergreen leaves and crowned with candles, and every woman in the family receives her blessing. Siv weeps with joy, as she takes a match and lights it on her crown, passing the flame around to everyone else, until the whole of the great house is illuminated, every one of them lifting a candle high into the air as they sing.

In the summer, they come home a few weeks early, while the sun dances through Gemini, and Dani carries internally so it is no trouble to get the airline to let her onboard. When it’s time, the women wash her, and she sits in the birthing chair clutching Pelle’s hand, and as Hanna prepares her medicine to keep her from bleeding, Siv waits to catch her son with gloved hands. The whole family waits outside the house, singing the soft, sibilant music of anticipation.

She doesn’t really even get to see him after he’s born, and everything is a great blur of movement as the others wash him off and sever his cord. By the time they show him to her, it is nearly sundown, and Maja is suckling him in a rocking chair beside her bed. He is such a little bean of a thing, Dan, son of Dani, and though there’s no mistaking his little button nose, he looks to Dani as though he could easily be Maja’s child. He could be anyone’s child.

Perhaps that’s why it isn’t so hard to leave him there, after their three-month stay for the summer. She knows he will be safe, and cared for, and held. She bounces him in her lap while Pelle and Sten put their bags in the car, and then she hands him to Karin without a shred of worry. When she sees him again, he’ll be learning to crawl.

She’s almost surprised by how little she misses him, when their plane takes off. But, she knows she has no reason to worry. Her family, her son’s family, will keep him safe. It’s not all up to her.


End file.
